Hundreds of Jewish gravestones found in Greece

(JTA) — Police in northern Greece have recovered hundreds of headstones from Jewish graves destroyed during the Holocaust.

The 668 fragments were found buried in a plot of land in central Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, following a 70-year search for the remains of graves smashed when the city’s main Jewish cemetery was destroyed, the Associated Press reported.

The head of the city’s Jewish community, David Saltiel, said most of the marble gravestones found dated from the mid-1800s up until World War II.

An estimated 60,000 Greek Jews, most of the country’s prewar Jewish population, were killed in the Holocaust.